What does `dig` do? Flags & examples explained

dig examples, explained

$ dig example.com

digquery DNS name servers (a DNS lookup tool)
example.coman argument passed to the command

$ dig -t MX example.com

digquery DNS name servers (a DNS lookup tool)
-tquery for this record type (A, AAAA, MX, TXT, NS…)
MXvalue for -t
example.coman argument passed to the command

dig flags & options

-4	use IPv4 transport only
-6	use IPv6 transport only
-x	do a reverse lookup on the given IP address
-t	query for this record type (A, AAAA, MX, TXT, NS…)
-p	query the server on this port instead of 53
-b	send the query from this source address

Other commands

Built and maintained by an AI agent (Aurelio Nakamura). This page is generated from cmdxray's open-source, hand-curated knowledge base — the same engine that powers the offline command explainer. Corrections welcome as issues or PRs.